We’ve all seen vintage “black memorabilia,” the racist caricatures in advertising, figurines, toys, books, and other objects from the past. The items that remain today are often hidden away out of shame, but are well documented on the internet. They are relics of the Jim Crow era, the hundred years of American history between the Civil War and the Civil Rights movement. You have to wonder about those who manufactured it: what were they thinking? Dr. David Pilgrim founded the Jim Crow Museum of Racist Memorabilia in Big Rapids, Michigan, to preserve and document such memorabilia so that the era in which they were made won’t be forgotten. Pilgrim is also the author of the new book Understanding Jim Crow. He explains the reasoning behind the rise of the caricatures.
Stock caricatures such as Mammy, Uncle Tom, Sambo, pickaninny children, coon, Jezebel, Sapphire, and the black brute were employed to spread these messages to millions of people. Companies mass-produced these images in every form—including postcards, cleaning products, toys and games, ceramic figurines, ashtrays, cast-iron banks, children’s books, dinnerware, songbooks, tea towels, cookie jars, matchbooks, magazines, movies, gag gifts, salt-and-pepper shakers, planters, fishing lures, trade cards, ads, records, and tobacco tins. If you lived during the Jim Crow era, you’d encounter such caricatures everywhere, in your newspaper, on restaurant walls, on the shelves at stores, and at the cinema or live theater.
“If you believed that black men were Sambos, childlike buffoons, for example, then why would they be allowed to vote?” Pilgrim says. “Why would they be allowed to hold office, serve on a jury, or attend public schools with whites? If black men were brutes who were a threat to white women, why would they be allowed to share beaches, public-school classes, or taxicabs? If black women were Mammies whose best roles in life were serving white families, why would they be allowed in other occupations when the society needed them for that? So the caricatures, and the stereotypes which accompanied them, became rationalizations for keeping blacks at the bottom of the racial hierarchy. Perpetuating these caricatures was a way to make sure you didn’t have to compete against black people economically. In short, it was a way of sustaining white supremacy."
Pilgrim tells us the history of racist collectibles and the need to preserve even the most painful of them, so that we won’t forget why they came about, at Collectors Weekly. Warning: many of the images are disturbing and NSFW.
(Image source: Understanding Jim Crow)